Crabbe's Poetry Book
by duj
Summary: HBP/DH spoilers. Crabbe writes poetry. Who knew? Seventh year, curses and Carrows and Crucio...
1. Growing up green

CRABBE'S POETRY BOOK

**This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.**

**A/N: Spoilers, now HBP-compatible**

**There's no indication in canon of either Goyle or Crabbe having hidden depths but we only ever see them through Gryffindor eyes. How would the Gryffindors notice?**

"What you got?"

Vin looked up from the book in his large square fist and handed it over to his slightly shorter friend with a shrug. Their mothers and Aunt Narcy had been best friends since school so they'd grown up together, them and Draco, almost like brothers and they were used to sharing everything.

Greg sat down next to him on the bed. His low heavy brow wrinkled as he read, lips moving as he sounded out the words.

_What does it mean to be growing up green.  
__The colour of envy, the colour of spring?  
__Why do I feel that I'm growing up empty,  
__Serf to a serpent and living his dream?_

_Green is the colour of growth and renewal,  
__Green grass and green leaves and seaweed and seeds,  
__Meadows and paddocks where little lambs frolic,  
__The healthy food each fluffy little lamb needs._

_For green is the colour of things that get eaten,  
__Heads nodding, arms waving, feet in the ground,  
__Trapped in a destiny nothing can sweeten,  
__Slither-in fly-trapper into your shrouds._

_So avidly Avada, cut up my cadaver,  
__Wheat's made for reaping and soon so am I,  
__Send me a sweet dream so I keep on sleeping  
__And plant me again till the next time I die._

He looked up at the end with a puzzled frown.

"This is no good," he said.

Vin pushed the hair out of his eyes but it flopped down again as soon as he removed his hand. That was the problem with a pudding-bowl cut but he'd always had his hair this way and saw no reason to change.

No good. That was an understatement. It was no good as poetry – Its rhyme scheme changed from verse to verse, not like that Muggle anthology he'd sneaked out of Hogwarts library last year and hidden, reduced, in his broom-care kit – and getting these ideas felt no good either. He looked at his friend and shrugged agreement.

"Draco said something short and snappy," Greg explained earnestly, "like that 'Weasley's our king' song you wrote last year."

"Why's he care? Thought he was talking 'bout dropping it?"

He didn't have to spend all his time mugging up remedial DADA in hopes of passing the OWLs this time around like they did but somehow he always seemed to be busy. Strange to be too busy for Quidditch! He kept hinting at an exciting secret that he couldn't tell them about but what could be more exciting than being Seeker, especially with the match against Gryffindor coming up next month?

Greg shrugged and rubbed his nose.

"Says we can still lead the cheers even if we can't play."

Vin nodded and let his head fall onto his inky left hand. It left a smear of ink on his cheek but he didn't notice. He screwed up his face. A short snappy Quidditch cheer? Who cared anyway? They'd never beat the Gryffs. Even when they did old Dumbles always pulled some sort of swifty to put the Gryffs back in first place. Or he just cancelled the competition like last year. But he'd been giving Draco what he wanted since the first time Draco had held a hand out for his toy basilisk when they were babies. He might as well continue.

"Green is keen and red is dead; Gryffindors go boil your heads," he produced after a moment. His knuckles were itchy again. He rubbed them.

There was a lengthy silence as Greg let the words roll around his head.

"Yeah, that'd do." He borrowed his friend's quill and a spare piece of parchment. "How'd it go again?"

Vin sighed and grabbed them out of his friend's meaty hand. It would be quicker to do this himself.

"Never mind, I'll write it."

Greg ran a hand through his wiry stubble of hair as he watched his friend. These days Vin was awfully twitchy.

"Vin?"

"Mmm?"

"Vin?" Greg's voice was even lower and raspier than usual. His small deep-set eyes were troubled. "Don't you like being in Slytherin?"

His friend's hand jerked, dropping an inkblot over the parchment. Then his head jerked up too, eyes narrowed and lips pursed.

"Where else would I want to be? The other houses are useless."

But that was an evasion. True there was nowhere else at Hogwarts: the Huffies were too plodding, the 'Claws too boring and the Gryffs – ugh! Too gryffie. But he was beginning to think of a world outside Hogwarts. A world where there were no house expectations to limit him, where he could just be Vin Crabbe and nothing else. Did it even exist or was the whole world divided into just those four groups?

"I dunno, " Greg pondered. "But you don't seem happy."

"Nothing's been the same since our dads got put away." Vin's hand tightened around the quill and his mouth went thin and pinched. "I still don't believe it. Our dads were too – old. Why would they be in a secret organisation or running around in masks at night? Sure dad doesn't like Mudbloods – who could? - but he's never seemed to care about politics. Why did he bother?"

Greg shrugged and cracked his knuckles. He always started with the little finger, one, two, three, and worked his way, one, two, three, one, two, three, one. two, three, up to his thumb, one, two. When he'd done both hands he looked up.

"I guess they thought it was important. It's all about saving the world, innit? Keeping the muddies from polluting us."

The other boy sighed as he handed over the parchment. Why did it feel like the three of them were growing apart?

Draco had always been the clever one who thought up all the games and turned even dull days into adventures. When they were little he'd made up the stories about the daring exploits of Barney Basilisk, Liu Ching Liondragon and Greg's Maxi Manticore. He'd always led the expeditions and chosen the destinations whenever they played explorers. He was a terrific mimic too. He used to keep them in stitches in the Common Room on long cold winter evenings after curfew, especially his impersonations of McGroanagall and Hag-ridden.

After their hospital stay at St Mungos last summer somehow he seemed to have run out of ideas. He was too busy hiding behind icicle eyes, pretending he was all right, or waving his covered left arm at them with a smile that wavered between triumphant and terrified. He couldn't really have joined You-Know-Who, could he? Not still in school! And why? It just didn't sound so exciting any more, not now they knew they'd be following in their dads' footsteps instead of rebelling against their parents' boring respectable Ministry-supporting lives.

It didn't seem to bother Greg. He was still as simple and direct as a farmer plowing a field in straight stripes, never deviating an inch from his destination. He never worried about whether white was white or black or fifty shades of grey. He did what he'd always been taught was right and that was that.

Vin watched him walk away and sighed again. If only he could be so certain.

**A/N In OotP, Draco asks "How do you like my cheer?" but his claim could come from having "commissioned" it, i.e. had the idea or asked his friend to write it.**

**Canon doesn't mention a hospital stay but they were rather badly hexed by the DA on the train home in 5th year.**

**The explanations are mostly Crabbe's thoughts,and are therefore not always strictly grammatical.**


	2. Going Nowhere

GOING NOWHERE

**This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.**

**A/N: HBP Spoilers. The previous chapter has been altered to be HBP-compatible also.Thanks to all my reviewers.**

Vin hunched his shoulders and stared down at what he'd written so far. His hair flopped over his face again. Scowling he pushed it away. He'd tried gelling it back like Draco's that summer but he didn't like it – and Draco had stomped off in a huff when he saw - but he'd occasionally toyed with the thought of getting it cut as short as Greg's. It would be less bothersome that way. Except that everyone had enough trouble telling them apart already.

They weren't that much alike really. Two parts of a threesome, both large and strong and not very good at school stuff, but it shouldn't be that hard to tell them apart. He was taller and blonder and liked writing poetry; Greg was broader and hungrier and collected bugs – but only when no one was watching.

And of course he had longer toenails than Greg. Last term some joker had hexed him in the halls – he didn't know who but probably some ruddy Gryff – and made them grow hard and horny as a hippogriff's claws and fast as a baby dragon. Pompy hadn't known a charm to reverse it and had prescribed some foul potion that he'd had to drink every week since. Bleargh! Not even triple choc cream cake with coffee icing could drown the taste afterwards.

His eyes kindled. Only the boys in the dorm knew about his toenails but couldn't anyone else be bothered to look at them long enough to see the other differences? Just because they hung around together and both failed DADA O.W.L.s, did that make them identical twins or something?

No, it ruddy didn't. He rubbed his itchy knuckles and glowered down at the page.

_You think  
'Cos I don't say much I don't see much  
Truth is  
I'm afraid to see too clear _

_You think  
That living near me means you know me  
Truth is  
You barely notice if I'm here _

_You think  
I must be stupid as my face is  
Truth is  
You see the lock but have no key _

_You think  
That you know where we should be going  
Truth is  
You're going nowhere I can see._

All of them running around in circles playing at being on one side or the other instead of just being people. But this wasn't about everybody. It was about one person who should know better. Who seemed to be getting stupider as he got older instead of cleverer.

_You think  
That if I follow you're the leader  
Truth is  
That you're the scout who clears my way _

_You think  
That all my strength is in my muscles  
Truth is  
I'm getting stronger every day _

_Till I'll be strong enough to say  
That I can't stay  
__This way._

Lately he was sick of it. Sick of everything, school, people, expectations, Draco – most of all, Draco. He at least should know better. Near seventeen years of doing things together and now it seemed like he knew them as little as everyone else – or maybe he just didn't care to look any more.

It never used to matter that he was the brainy one. He'd welcomed their company and though they'd always given him the lead as of right in all their exploits he'd treated them as equals not underlings. Or had they just not noticed? How long had he been despising them and using them while they'd made allowances because he was Draco, bossy excitable Draco with his large imagination and impatient habit of command. Habit. Was that all that was left of a lifelong friendship?

All year he'd been making them stand guard for him while he fiddled away in the Room of Requirement and they didn't even know why. He wouldn't tell when he was asked.

"Look, it's none of your business what I'm doing, Crabbe, you and Goyle just do as you're told and keep a look out!" he'd snapped in the apparition lesson.

And then that smarmy git Potty had had to butt in.

"I tell my friends what I'm up to, if I want them to keep a look out for me."

Vin didn't even know if he'd been telling the truth or just stirring but he'd had a point. They'd been patient and understanding and Draco was getting more and more short-tempered and angry. Why couldn't they know?

They'd thought he was bluffing at the start of the school year. Why would the Dark Lord want someone still at school to work for him? What could any of them possibly do to be useful – even if they'd scraped an E in their DADA OWL like Draco? They'd smiled and nodded and pretended to be impressed. Draco loved it when they acted impressed.

Then when he'd come up with this polyjuice idea they'd gone along with it even though the stuff smelled vile and tasted worse than the toenail potion. Stupid Sluggy, showing off by making a vat of the stuff then leaving it out where they could pinch it. It was all his fault.

Vin really hated changing shape, squashing himself down like pouring a pint of butterbeer into a thimble. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a shudder of disgust. McGroanagall seemed to like it though. Maybe being an animagus didn't hurt so much though you'd think turning into a cat would be even squashier than turning into another person.

And then Draco had started using girl's hair! Urgh. Vin hated being a girl. So did Greg. A weak, wimpy, soft body with no muscles, justlumps and bumps in the wrong place and boys watching them jiggle. But they did it for him cos you do things for your friends, don't you? Even rotten things.

But now Vin couldn't help wondering. If Draco was bluffing he wouldn't look so sick. He wouldn't be so scared all the time. And he wouldn't sneak back in the dorm when he thought no one would be there with his eyes all red as if he'd been crying.

"Something's wrong," Vin told himself grimly, "a lot more wrong than I ever could have expected. And all I can do to help is say nothing and do as he wants."

He looked again at the last stanza of his poem. They'd been friends for seventeen years. He'd always thought they'd be friends for life like their mums were. Maybe not but he wasn't going to be the one to walk away. Greg had never wavered and he wouldn't either. He nodded grimly and crossed out the last two words to his poem so he could write in a better.

_Till I'll be strong enough to say  
That I can't stay  
__Away. _

If he could just hold on another three and a half months till the end of the school year maybe it would all come good. Maybe Draco would sort out whatever was making him so edgy and see him and Greg again – really see them like he used to.

Yeah, that's what he'd do. Watch – and wait. Things would get better. They had to.


	3. Wrong Way Home

WRONG WAY HOME

**This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.**

**Thanks to my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Cecelle.**

**WARNING This fic contains HBP Spoilers. Enter at own risk if you haven't read HBP.**

Vin stared down at his book in puzzlement, pushing his floppy hair off his face and leaning his head on that hand. He'd never written a – a _song_ – before. And that it should come now, now on the worst day of his life – "Yet!" he added grimly – it was just wrong somehow.

If he'd thought, if he'd ever suspected that his silly private rhymes could turn into lyrics, into something useful that the three of them could maybe do together, be together as grown-ups… Maybe they could have been as famous as the Weird Sisters, girls hanging off their arms, pictures in the papers, go where they wanted, do what they wanted – but not without Draco. He'd never expected to have to live his life without Draco.

He stared across the dorm to the smooth empty bed, still neat from yesterday. They'd waited last night, but Draco had never come. Only a wild-eyed and rumpled Professor Slughorn very early in the morning, announcing that he was their Head of House from now on.

Draco would never be coming. He'd run off in the night with Professor Snape, of all people – Draco had been brushing him off all year, he didn't even _like_ him any more – run off with Snape back to the Dark Lord. Vin hadn't even believed Draco really got Marked last summer, it just seemed so silly to think _He'_d be interested in schoolkids, though they'd played up like anything in the train last year when Draco told them he was 'cos he always liked an audience, Draco did. But it was true. Draco was gone, Snape too – and old Dumbles was dead.

Dead! And everyone was saying it was Snape that did it and those rumours about his Death Eater past were true. Old Snape that never laid a finger on anyone even when he was frothing, not even on Bottoms or Potty! There'd been a battle in the school – actually _inside_ the school – with Death Eaters and werewolves. And Draco was all mixed up in it somehow. That was what he'd been doing in that room all year, figuring out how to let them in. And now he was gone and it was odds-on they'd never see him again. Not alive, anyway.

Till this year they'd always done things together, good or bad. Quidditch, messing around, duelling the Gryffs – Heck, they'd even been slugs together a year ago! He'd never expected to have a day worse that that one, dragged off the Hogwarts Express by their cringing mums and off to St Mungo's, without having avenged their dads.

But this was worse. Draco was gone and it was just him and Greg. And what were they going to do without him?

_Standing at the crossroads, don't know which way to turn,  
Behind the fire rages and everything, it burns.  
Should I take the path of our fathers,  
Try to quench it with oil?  
Take the way of my teachers,  
Watch the kettles boil?  
Follow along with my friends around,  
Pretend there's nothing there?  
I see one path left to me,  
Build a bridge to despair._

Their dads were Death Eaters – well, his and Draco's were and he'd bet that Greg's was too, even if he hadn't been on that mission that landed their dads in Azkaban. No use asking them what to do next.

And their teachers – all but Snape and he was a Death Eater too and no longer available for advice– weren't interested in helping Slytherins. They'd known that since first year.

And his friends? Pansy and Blaise were too frightened to speak to him, something about not wanting to get caught up in Draco's mess, and Greg – well, Greg was straight as a die and loyal as a Huffie, but you wouldn't call him the world's greatest thinker. He was just as confused as Vin himself, but he'd just keep plodding along in the same direction he'd always gone, like an ox to the plough. It'd take an earthquake to shift him.

_I don't know where,  
I only know it's not there,  
It's not the way I'm going.  
I'm going the wrong way,  
Going the long way  
Home._

Caught up in Draco's mess – They were, weren't they, him and Greg? Not that they'd had the foggiest what they were guarding, only that it was against school rules, but would the Aurors believe that if they came nosing around? Not likely, not when his dad was in Azkaban already. It'd be guilt by association, just like always.

All he could hope was that no one knew. The Gryffs had spoken to Greg twice, but luckily he'd been a girl both times and they hadn't recognised him. Who'd have thought that Potty Scarhead would hit on a first year though? Draco almost hadn't been able to persuade Greg to help again after that.

So maybe they were safe. But then what? Exams had been cancelled, which meant they wouldn't get to re-sit their Defense O.W.L.s after all. And he was sure he'd have passed them this time after a year of Snape's tutoring, maybe even scraped an Exceeds Expectations if he was very lucky. Now people were saying the school might not even open next year. What was he going to do with no dad to smooth his way and only Acceptables in Herbology, Potions and Care of Magical Creatures from last year's O.W.L.s to show an employer? There wasn't even anyone to ask. He didn't even know Sluggy – never had a class with him – but everyone knew he only cared about clever clogs and connectables.

_Asked the wide world to tell me,  
How do I get through?  
What's left to believe in,  
What's left to do?  
Should I climb as high as the mountains,  
Till the air's too thin to breathe?  
Float along with the river,  
Till it washes me to sea?  
Hack a path through the forest,  
Where I cannot see the sky?  
Sink in the sand of the marshland,  
Wait alone to die?_

He scratched his head. That was silly, that was, that verse was pushing it a bit. He wouldn't even have written it down only it reminded him of a story Draco had made up once for one of their games, back when they were small and still acting out adventures. Liu Ching Liondragon had got lost – not really, just pretending – and Barney Basilisk and Maxi Manticore had been looking for him around Draco's house. They'd hunted up and down the stairs for mountains, through long empty hallways for deep-cleft rivers, into the lush green conservatory like a forest over their heads, and out to the lawn, where they all got walloped for digging holes.

_I don't know where,  
I only know it's not there,  
It's not the way I'm going.  
I'm going the wrong way,  
Going the long way  
Home_

He turned his head a moment to watch Greg, sitting stiff and silent and hunched over his beetle collection, like he always did when he was upset, then looked back to his book. His eyes burned as he ripped out the page and crumpled it into a tight little ball. He wanted those days back again. But Draco was gone.


	4. Losers

LOSERS

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.**

**A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Lady Memory. DH took Crabbe to a dark place, and in order to stay canon, my story had to follow. Caution advised...**

Vin sat on the bed, idly tracing the last line with his eyes. That was the whole point, wasn't it?

_Your eyes accuse,  
__Your cries bemuse.  
__Should I recuse?  
__What did you choose?_

_When I was you  
__And fallen too,  
__Hexed into goo;  
__What did you do?_

_When you were me  
__Your wand hand free  
__You did not flee.  
__You laughed in glee._

_The heifer moos.  
__The pigeon coos.  
__The woodsman hews.  
__Not new; not news._

_The lover woos.  
__The drunkard spews.  
__The curse subdues.  
__The losers bruise._

_(The blacks and blues  
__The loser rues,  
__And cheek bedews  
__With aarghs and oohs.)_

_Your eyes accuse.  
__Your cries amuse.  
__The picture skews.  
__I win. You lose._

They were all such hypocrites. Liars. As if they wouldn't do the same in his position. Even Draco.

Draco hadn't said anything, but he'd seen it in his eyes, in the inward pinched quirk at the corner of his mouth where his teeth were chewing on it. 'How can you do it?' His eyes had said. 'How do you somehow enjoy it?'

How? Like it was hard? Like he needed to do anything but call up a memory of the three of them, wedged into an overhead rack on the train ride home after fifth year, helpless, limbless, guts cramped with wanting to go, gullets dry as a bone, and everyone who walked by stopping to point and giggle and whisper. Hours of that, days, years it had seemed. He was top dog now, and if they didn't like it they had only themselves to blame.

("Practise, boy!" Snape had said last year in those endless remedial classes. "Practise again and again until you do it right."

Practice, yes, that was the key. With every detention he got better and faster. With every curse cast, he grew stronger and more precise.)

_Crucio, Crucio, Crucio the lot of you!  
__Avada Kedavra 'til at last I will be shot of you.  
__Pinch away from me the stinking reek of all the rot of you.  
__Stamp you into dust until my boots have made a blot of you..._

The problem with Draco was he was weak. When saving your family meant killing a dotty old man you didn't like, you killed him. Hell, you killed him even if you did like him, if it was your family at stake. Draco was weak. He'd always been weak. Vin was not. Not anymore.

All his life he'd heard "stupid boy ... dunderhead ... can't do anything right!" Not even Snape had ever praised his work. Not even Umbridge had ever valued him in his own right. Who'd have thought that seventh year would reverse the fortunes/failures of a lifetime? No more bashing bludgers about; he'd seen the Snitch, and it was his for the grabbing.

There were new teachers now, good teachers. Teachers who cared about him, Vin; teachers who wanted him to excel. And excel he would. Professor Carrow Sir knew a whole heap of curses and Vin was going to learn them all.

**A/N The second and third stanzas of the first poem refer to the train ride home in fifth year, when Draco and his friends were cursed into slug form and left that way. It seems likely to me that, by seventh year, Draco's friends would know he'd tried and failed to kill Dumbledore, and why.**


End file.
